<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>i'll close my eyes, shut my brain (crush) by popmart (tambsi)</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26426185">i'll close my eyes, shut my brain (crush)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambsi/pseuds/popmart'>popmart (tambsi)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Duran Duran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Break Up, Songfic, Tumblr Prompt, kinda sorta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:14:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,942</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26426185</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tambsi/pseuds/popmart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d led Simon on, plain and simple. Led him on and made him think that things would get better, that he would recover, that <em>they</em> would recover.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Simon Le Bon/John Taylor (Duran Duran)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i'll close my eyes, shut my brain (crush)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_and_Velvet/gifts">Pink_and_Velvet</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Wrote this for the ever-lovely Pink_and_Velvet, who requested a couple prompts over on my tumblr yesterday. This was supposed to be short, but it got wildly out of control very quickly. <br/>I took a few liberties since I didn't have the ability to do a lot of accuracy research as I wrote this. I hope it works for y'all anyways!</p>
<p>Prompts:<br/>'things you said with too many miles between us' &amp; 'things you said with no space between us'</p>
<p>title from OMD's 'Crush', which I listened to a fair bit while writing the first half of this (when I wasn't listening to Medazzaland.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Late 1997</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not being a part of Simon’s life had been an evil, albeit a necessary evil, for John. He needed to stay <em>clean</em>, and for reasons he wasn’t going to spend time dwelling on, staying clean meant a change of scenery. Scenery that wasn’t connected intrinsically to Simon, to Nick, to Duran Duran. Somewhere to start fresh, bloom anew with whatever his sobered mind and the future happened to have for him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He liked to think he’d been doing well for himself since moving to L.A. Mostly focusing on music, living a better life than one where nearly every night was coke, drinks, and whores. (Or the nights when his mind was…clearer, and <em>he</em> was the whore, for Simon. Those were the better nights by far…)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d almost forgotten that the band was still managing to write and finish an album without him, one that he’d up and walked out on at the beginning of the year. Not his most brilliant move, but something in his gut had told him at the time that it was either <em>now or never</em>, and it had already felt like the creative equivalent of a car left to burn on a desert highway. John just felt like he was the one left alive, crawling out of the metal and rubble, managing to run away before it exploded.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Or before he did. He couldn’t quite tell which.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So, besides a few hastily exchanged emails between representatives and a terse lunch conversation between himself, Nick, and Simon a few months back — one he’d dissociated for the better part of, because all he’d wanted to do was to fall back on his knees and beg for forgiveness for all he’d done over the last decade plus — he hadn’t put much thought to the new album.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not until one afternoon in late October, when he receives a package in the mail, postmarked from <em>home</em>, from Nick, he presumes. It’s not like Simon has talked to him since the lunch, anyhow. Nick hasn’t either, but he’d be more likely to send him something if it was business related than Simon would, if only out of obligation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not a big package, and glumly boring to look at from the outside. He didn’t even think it was a CD until he’d opened it. But then it’s open, and the blank crystal case falls out onto his dining room table, <em>Medazzaland</em> staring up at him written on the CD in what is very clearly Nick’s handwriting. <em>So he was correct</em>. He tries not to think of the sting that goes through his heart at the realization that Simon wasn’t giving him <em>anything</em> after their separation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John swallows his pride, and hurries over to his home stereo system, slipping the CD into the interchangeable player and pressing play. He’s both irritated and glad that he doesn’t have any alcohol nearby. As the beginning notes to the title song start to wind their way through the room, he leans back into the couch he’s decided to take residence on, and wishes that he had thought to invite a friend over to help bear this with him. <em>Too late now.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not too bad for the first few tracks, in fact he nods his head appreciatively to <em>Electric Barbarella</em> and rolls his eyes fondly at the lyrics. It’s shamelessly Duran and he almost can’t wait to hear it on the local radio in the coming weeks, now having heard it all instead of a few snags here and there. So he was fine, and deep down inside praying that maybe whatever was yet to come wouldn’t be too bad. The CD hadn’t come with a lyric sheet, so he only had the titles typed on a piece of paper on the back of the case. They weren’t terribly helpful besides the ones he’d known about before he’d left.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not until <em>Who Do You Think You Are</em> that John gets swayed by Simon’s vocal delivery. He knows that Simon’s not the one writing all of the words like it was in the beginning of things, but there were lines — and the chorus — that struck John as if they were sung directly at him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>“Don’t want to be your enemy,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>If I’m not the one you want me to be,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And I’ve got to do things the way that I do…”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John can’t help the hot, wet tears that well up behind his eyes at those words. Knowing that those were sentiments that Simon had put to the front in the past, if only through a terribly annoyed Nick, during one of their studio sessions for <em>Liberty</em>, years back. He’s surprised that he remembered that, with all the hash oil and other crap that had been winding through him at the time, but the circumstances had been..rather intense.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Simon hadn’t necessarily wanted to drift from John, and he knew that <em>now.</em> Too damn bad he couldn’t get his head straight sooner. Maybe he could’ve saved whatever they had had, maybe the sweetness that’d been shared between them when they were young would still be just as sweet, and not bitterer than the most tart of licorice.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>“Sometimes I think it’s a game to you…”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John thinks back to all of the times he’d claimed that he would get off the coke, stop drinking all the whiskeys and champagnes, change himself for everyone’s sake — for Simon’s sake, especially. Oh, how Simon had believed him, even attempted to help him, in the beginning.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>“Ever wonder how I feel inside?</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>And sometimes I play along, but man I’ve got a mind!”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d led Simon on, plain and simple. Led him on and made him think that things would get better, that he would recover, that <em>they</em> would recover. Only to relapse over and over again. Sometimes on accident, more times for the most foolish reasons. The latter relapses had been the brick and mortar for the wall that slowly built between the two of them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As Simon’s voice rolls through with <em>“You’ve got to live with yourself for the rest of your life…”</em> John sinks further into the sofa and runs a hand over his face, a strangled moan escaping from his throat.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>“Do you understand?”</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John certainly did, he understood. More than he really wanted to, even if he knew it was necessary that he did. If the people he talked to about the shit going on in his head and with his troubles could hear his thoughts right now they’d probably be both proud of the progress, and terrified of the fact that this was the closest to relapsing that he’d felt in quite a while.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With that in mind, he quickly shoots up from the couch, the song slowly fading out at this point, and moves to shut off the CD player. He hastily takes the CD out and houses it back in its case, placing it on top of it so he wouldn’t forget it. He couldn’t bring himself to finish the album at that point. Not by himself. There was no way in hell he could take even one more implication of that nature alone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He goes over to the phone on the other side of the room, and dials someone he knows will help him out of this. Slides down to the floor with the receiver in his hand, and waits for Andy’s familiar voice on the other end of the dial tones.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>—————————————————————</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Late 2003</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John thinks to himself, as he leans against Simon and lets out a loudly enthusiastic cackle at some quip the frontman had made, that <em>he’d never get enough of being in Simon’s space.</em> Of sharing the same oxygen, the same heat, the same atoms. It’d been so terribly long without this close contact that when he’d come back into Simon’s life like a comet returning to cycle, he was almost afraid that he’d forgotten how to coexist with him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But one year had turned to three, nearly four years, and he knew that he was fine. That Simon <em>wanted</em> him in his space, wanted to be melded like paper to glue…no, something stronger. Melded together like precious metals, never to be torn apart, only able to be melted until there was nothing but the two of them, together and totally inseparable.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If he could have told himself five, six years prior that things would be like this, so utterly easy, he would’ve probably gotten a black eye from his past self. It was for the best that this ending was one he could’ve never imagined for himself back then. Having no expectations of ending back up in Duran Duran, in Simon’s life again, had made the transition less complicated.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Admittedly, there had been moments, private moments, when he was tucked away in bed with Simon at his house in England, that he’d tried to apologize for his shortcomings in the past. It wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, he was aware, but sometimes his mouth ran faster than his mind. He would be eternally grateful that Simon still seemed to sense this in him, being able to placate his worries with firm holds and kisses.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What’s done is done, and in the past.” Simon would whisper into his mussed hair, sealing his words with kisses to the tender skin behind his ear “I’ve always loved you…even when I had to be away from you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’re not saying that just to shut me up, are you?” John croaks out, tilting his head to the side so Simon had better access to his neck.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“No, I’m not.” Simon replies, running a hand tenderly up John’s chest, fingers catching on the hair enough to give a pleasant tug before releasing to allow for travel until they reached his collarbone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s the plain and simple truth, you git. I loved you from the moment I saw that nerdy Nigel in the <em>Runner</em>, I loved you on those beaches in Antigua. I loved you even when I realized I was losing you, the first time, even the thirtieth time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John, it may not be apparent to you, but I knew that I’d never understand what you were going through, deep down inside. But I knew that whether you recovered or…well, whatever happened, you had to go it by yourself. I couldn’t help you constructively and I knew that somehow I wasn’t helping things by being frustrated with you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Simon leads each <em>I loved you</em> with a kiss under his eyes and between them, and he breathes the rest of his words into John’s cheek, which is now wet with shed tears.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Johnny, I’m glad that you said yes. That we’ve got this second chance together. I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Above all, I’m beyond glad that I get to be with you at your best, and <em>I mean that.</em>”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John doesn’t even know what to say to that, but his hands seem to have a mind of their own as they clutch for Simon’s shoulders and pull him somehow impossibly close, sealing their mouths with a desperate kiss. Simon seems to understand what’s unspoken from him, and opens his mouth to allow John’s tongue to wrap around his own.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They don’t go further that night, the air too raw with confession and forgiveness. However, in any moment after, their touches, kisses, and lovemaking were more heartfelt and <em>real</em> than they had been before.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So, John stays leaned into Simon’s side as the interview winds down, and knows that eventually he’ll have the words to tell Simon <em>that there was nothing better than being with him.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>END.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>